On the path of faith you will always meet the temptation to go the safe route or the less “stretching” less “uncomfortable” less “challenging”. There is also the temptation to take the “popular” “well travelled” path. The path that makes “more sense”, and holds your reputation in tact. Walking by faith is never void of internal wrestles within. The what if’s, and the “what am I doing?” questions that loudly try to sway your heart into submission to sense and reason. If you look at it, all these temptations aid to preserve the flesh.
Faith will never preserve your flesh. It’s not designed to do so, for faith is born of the Spirit. (1 John 5:4).
So many times we try to aid the flesh in comfort while aiming for victory by faith. Not gonna happen my friend. Faith is walking by the spirit. And when you walk after the spirit you won’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh, which is the temptation to preserve and gratify yourself.
Walking by faith will challenge your patience, your trust, your faithfulness and endurance, your loyalty, your integrity and your honour.
Sometimes we ask God if He needs our help in doing what only He can do. We are tempted like Abraham to just “help” along the process and scheme some great idea, only to end up bitterly disappointed at the failure of our efforts, then somehow wind up disappointed with God for something He had nothing to do with!!!
When Jesus was asked by the people what works they were to do to be satisfactory to God, he simply said “Believe” (John 6:28-29).
While wrestling in my heart recently over a promise the Lord has spoken to me, my heart began to go into a very familiar place of once again “trying to work it out”. The temptation to do things in my own strength was powerfully trying to lure me into action, which in actual fact would cause me to commit treason to my faith. As I was praying, I found myself asking God for permission to “take action” on this particular brain wave idea that was not inspired by Him but motivated by my impatience and if I was really honest, a slight question that still remained in the bottom crevice of my heart, “are you going to do it Lord?”
Recognising the anxt these meditations of my heart were producing, in that moment, I stopped and said out loud, “No! I choose to believe!” In that moment you know very well you have to die to the other “alternatives” that somehow comfort your stretched flesh, in order to fully nestle your heart into the truth of that statement. You must forfeit your own efforts to TRULY believe.
To believe you need to resist. Resist the temptation to be negative, critical, impatient, unloving and frustrated. Resist the temptation to save your reputation, justify yourself and seek revenge. Resist the temptation to yield to fear, run ahead of God and control everything that moves. Resist the temptation to preserve your pride, promote yourself and put yourself before others. Resist the lies the enemy has sown in your heart, that you are not good enough, inferior and unloved. Resist the temptation to believe you can’t do it, it’s too hard, and you are a failure. Resist the temptation to go your own way, not trust God, and believe that God will not come through. Resist the temptation to believe God is not good, faithful or kind.
Say it out of your mouth! NO! I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE!
It will break the war that rages in you, because you have submitted yourself under the word of God which has the power to save your soul ( James 1:21).
James 4:7 “Submit to God resist the devil and He will flee”.
Submission is step one to positioning your heart to believe. Hebrews 3 even speaks of how the children of israel missed out on the promises because they had rebellion in their heart that caused a hard heart of unbelief which denied them access to entering His rest.
To believe you must yield. Yield your heart to believe and in doing so you are declaring “your way Lord not mine, I trust you and you are Lord of my life not me or any other person”.
Let the power of “I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE” settle your heart back to peace. Even if you don’t know how. The “how” is not your responsibility, your responsibility is to “BELIEVE”, This is the rest and this is where you can surely find peace within the storm.
